


Spelldaggers

by Aithilin



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 03:29:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15788034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: Ignis prepared for every eventuality. When he designed the daggers, it was to keep up with Noctis. He hadn't planned for the outcome of his experiments beyond that.





	Spelldaggers

It had been hard to keep up with training when it moved beyond just the physical strength and prowess and mastery of the various weapons in the Citadel’s possession. Though they had studied together, Ignis had always known that Noctis would take a different path in his lessons eventually. He knew that Noctis would be able to draw in the raw elements of magic, and shape them as he needed. He knew that Noctis, his young, curious prince, would safely reach out to touch the jutting, jagged elemental stones that dotted the Citadel gardens. And he would be left standing by uselessly while flames and frost and electricity danced across Noctis’ arm without leaving a mark. 

Ignis knew, the first time he saw it, that there were skills that he could not help Noctis learn. 

Not really. Not without learning more himself. 

The members of the Kingsglaive held the gift of taking in the royal magic. Ignis had watched them train as Noctis learnt his own power. He had watched as the magic of the king flared to life in the Glaive’s hands— shields and spells and shards of the Crystal’s power all conjured up with far more effort than Noctis could manage. He watched as they struggled to keep up too. As Nyx, as Crowe, as Luche— the names of heroes he had studied for their deeds in service to the crown— all fell behind Noctis’ natural power. 

He decided, watching Crowe teaching Noctis how to control the spells he could craft— showing him how they could click into place when summoned, when syphoned off whatever source gave them power— that he would do better. He would be the Glaive trusted to Noctis’ side even in this. 

Even if he wasn’t a Glaive.

Ignis learnt the theory first. He learnt how to carefully craft and mold; how to handle the spells and strengthen them in increments. He learnt the arts practised by the Glaives— the gentle coaxing of mystic strengths and royal power as it tried to wander off on its own paths. Much like the king and prince who could conjure it without thought. He sat with tomes of ancient theory and recipes, of musings and journals from those far more skilled. He followed the careful instructions when he practised building spells from elements supplied with ease from his friend. 

They were recipes to him, as delicate and finicky as a souffle. 

Noctis experimented rather than studied. He let wild magic fall from his hands without much thought in training, laughing as Gladiolus slipped on frozen stone floors in training while he prepared controlled slides out of harm’s way. Ignis watched, from over the edge of his book on the same matter, as Noctis played with the power of the kings where even the Glaives tried to not let it burn them. 

There was a practicality to Noctis sharing his power. In a sense. 

Ignis could not wield it. It would consume him and Noctis refused to try the first time the thin trails of ashen scarring trailed up Ignis’ hand and arm as they tested the first of their limits.. Like all Amicitias, their strength was not in their ties to magic. Gladio had shrugged off the limitation with a smile and a promise to physically throw Noctis at whatever needed a good dose of magic to kill. 

But there were containers and catalysts. And Ignis was much more talented with those. He had lists and references, a collection of trinkets and pieces of interest that Noctis had collected here and there in his daily routines. 

By the time Noctis had finished school, Ignis had amassed a collection of things to work with, all bearing labels and effects and theories in one of his notebooks. He learnt that feathers had the right design to focus an intent, but was poor at strengthening. Reflective stones— the ones Noctis had been picking up for years because they caught the light the right way— were better foundations and stabilised the stronger spells. 

He had set to work on an idea while a new experiment in tarts baked and Noctis dozed. 

The daggers were his own design once he had mastered the building of spells himself. Once he had found a way to safely trap and store roiling, churning pieces of Noctis’ power in flimsy vials and flasks gifted by Cor. 

He admits that he was unoriginal when he named the daggers in the end. 

“There’s a latch,” he explained once he had the daggers forged, showing the blades off to Noctis with no small amount of pride at his design; “and while the vials are small, they only need to let the spells travel the length of the blade.” 

He may have revelled in the praise the design earned him, when Cor revealed them one afternoon in the Citadel between meetings. He revelled in the way Noctis grinned and readily steeped the catalyst Ignis had provided— a chip of stone in each, gifted by Regis and said to be from the meteor in Duscae— in the raw elements of the spells he carried. The little flasks clicked into place as easily as Ignis had planned. The latch could be moved, the spells released or contained with barely a movement of his hand. If needed, he could use the contained spells gifted by Noctis when necessary to light the necessary spark. 

Noctis beamed at the time, like a child with a new toy; “Let’s test them out, Specs.”

There were effects that Ignis hadn’t foreseen. 

The first time they had trained, Noctis danced back with quick steps away from the fires that had consumed the blades. “Iggy!”

“I’m fine, Noctis,” the flames danced along the honed edge of the blades, burning the targets they tested against rather than Ignis himself. As if he was wielding one of Noctis’ own spells as they had in training. It was careful, controlled as he had expected. “I’m fine.”

“We should keep a bucket of water handy,” Gladio said from the sidelines, arms crossed once he pulled Noctis away from the open flame of Ignis’ new weapon. As he held the prince in place with a look every time Noctis shuffled forward for a better look. 

They had elected for the Kingsglaive training rooms— for the safety of security measures meant to ward against unexpected magics and the wild nature of those who harnessed them. The stone walls with their gleaming insignias barely marked by past students learning to manage the power loaned to them. The floors rough from years of scuffs from blades and boots and spells shattering across their surfaces of polished stone. Floors that were better prepared for experiments.

“I don’t believe that would be necessary,” Ignis threw the knife at the target, the fire spreading from dagger to dummy with the same wild nature as Noctis’ own spells when they were unleashed. The safety measures of the training room activated and they were left doused and lectured by an amused Glaive Captain. But the test had worked. 

The fire had sparked first, before it found ignition on the surface of the blade. The designs— the signs and decorations of the royal house, the flowing, flowery motif of the Lucian kingdom— had done their job well to direct and control. To attempt to impress an order on the inherently wild. 

The next experiment was held outside, in the open air of the central training grounds. Where their damage could be minimised, the Captain had said. It was held out where the ground and stone and the broken structure of the tower were already scorched by uncontrolled fires and chipped by strikes from blades and lightning. Where the Wall shimmered overhead, and Noctis’ own barrier— a protection at Gladio’s insistence— slotted together like a web. 

The frost spells were different. The ice encased the daggers, and stopping at the latch Ignis could manipulate. His design was flawless. Modelled after the prince’s own blades that drew the power— the base components of life and magic— from his enemies, but reversed to expel that energy outward. 

The air around him cooled with the power of the spell, and he smiled his triumph to Noctis, peeking out from behind his barrier to get a clear look, until a large hand on his shoulder pulled him back. The ice was strong, chipping at the jagged tips to lodge in the training dummy they had dragged out to the grounds to test on; the spread of ice seeping out into the fabric, even as the tip reformed. Ignis watched as the web of frost moved over the surface of the dummy, shattering the stolen Magitek armour it had already pierced. He watched the tendrils of cold spread until the magic forced the armour to crack, breaking it apart like it was the thin layer of sugar he had placed on the dessert made last night. 

Cracking the image of the enemy with so little effort was just as satisfying as the first snap of the sugar when he had tapped it lightly with his dessert spoon. 

Without recalling the spell, he set the daggers down to better examine the damage the spell could inflict. To adjust his glasses and watch as the jagged faults in the once-pristine armour were brought to light. He leaned forward and tried to inspect the delicate curl of where Lucian magic wove its way through Niflheim defences. And frowned as Noctis started to laugh. 

It took Gladio to tug him free from the ice that had seeped across the ground. From the frost that he had left unattended until it— like an errant pet (or prince)— demanded his full focus once again. He had refused any spells from Noctis, lest he end up with singed trousers and shoes. The ice, less controlled than Noctis’ own, had spread from the daggers and latched on to all loose stone. Rather than slicking the surface, the grit and gravel trapped the frost where it was, frozen to the solid form of the spell. And it spread. It clung to any warmth it could find, stealing what it could in the same way fire steals oxygen. 

In the same way Noctis’ laugh stole his attention. 

“A little worse for wear,” Ignis said as Noctis grinned and teased. He assumed the blush was caused by his inability to predict what should have been obvious. “I will be more careful in the future of where I let those lay.”

The electricity had worried them at first. It required concentration and focus and planning. All things that Ignis once thought he excelled in. 

Until he watched Noctis handle the element. Until he watched strings of sparking, crackling lighting, hair thin and ribbon thick, travel the prince’s arm. Until he watched as Noctis laughed at Prompto’s incessant camera clicks, as dark hair stood on end (or as much as it could with the way it was styled) even as the magic obeyed its master’s call to settle in the palm of a hand. Or a small vial. 

Until he watched as Noctis handled the erratic sparks like toys. As he flicked harmless balls of soft buzzing energy at his breathless adviser, a halo of mock stars floating and crackling around him in the darkened training yards. 

Electricity took mastery. Concentration and preparation. It was a recipe Ignis had studied carefully and coldly, analysing each element and catalyst and step before he even considered attempting. 

And here was Noctis, laughing in the night, as he drew the lightning between his hands and let his focus drift with each tendril of wild light. 

“We doing this?” Gladio asked, having given up on cautioning safety. 

“Yes,” Ignis answered as he tried to regain himself and ground his focus in the gravity of the experiment “of course.”

He had prepared. He had watched the Glaives handling the magic. He had studied and planned, and thought he knew the effects of what he was working with. He thought he was focused though his eye wandered to Noctis dispelling the plaything he had made of his magic. 

The air snapped around him. 

His lips had pressed to the prince’s. 

Another snap and the air crackled around the daggers as he retreated. Gladio stood between them, confused, glaring, protective. 

“I…” He had planned and thought he knew what the lightning could do. And faced with the owlish looks of Noctis and Prompto, he was at a loss for words. “I…”

“I think I got it on camera,” Prompto offered.

“Iggy, can you _warp_?” Noctis was on his feet, breathless in excitement. “Like _really warp_?”

“Did you just _kiss_ Noct?”

Gladio’s words were what brought the electric excitement crashing around them. And Ignis realised that he had well and truly lost focus. “I…”

“I think Specs is broken,” Noctis said as he approached his friend. 

Prompto smirked— lit up by the screen on his camera as he scrolled to the pivotal moment; “About time. Probably not the best way though.”

There was another snap of the magic and Ignis ran. He had never run from anything before. Once, perhaps, when he had broken a Tenebrean vase in his uncle’s study. But he had been small, and scared, and startled. Here, his thoughts ran faster than he did, small and scared, and refusing to face the punishment his actions would bring down. 

He didn’t realise that he had dropped the daggers somewhere along the way until the air stopped crackling around him and the energy singing through his muscles was adrenaline rather than magic. 

He didn’t realise that he had left his phone somewhere along the way until the next morning, when he had composed half a dozen apologies and a few dozen confessions (and one or two resignations). He had drafted them all in his notebook— the one he never carried with him, the one Noctis had his hand slapped for touching once— before he went to copy the best one into his messages to send to his prince. He nearly panicked when he realised that it was gone. 

He feigned sick well enough for his uncle to have him excused from his duties for the day. 

Well enough for Noctis to show up on his doorstep with daggers and phone in hand, Gladio an exasperated shadow in the corridor shoving him across the threshold. 

“Talk,” was the gruff order given to them; “I’m going for a coffee.”

When the door closed with a resolute finality, Noctis offered up the missing items. “Specs—”

“Would you like a coffee?” Ignis blurted out first, face burning as he turned towards the larger kitchen that dominated his own apartment. It was better stocked, better organised, prepared for any sort of guest or eventuality. It was not, Ignis discovered as he searched through cupboards for an escape, stocked with enough distractions from this scenario. “Or tea, perhaps?”

“Got anything stronger?” It was said with a little half smile, a little shrug. 

Ignis wished it wasn’t a joke. But he smiled back, “A bit early, I’m afraid.”

The daggers sounded heavy as they were set on his buffet by the door. His phone delicately laid close by. 

Ignis knew when Noctis was steeling himself for something. He knew the way he prince straighted from his habitual slouch, and the sharp intake of breath as he prepared for something important and often unpleasant. Ignis prepared himself for the worst. For the dreaded ‘you are my friend’ talk he had been hoping to never hear, because he would have never given reason for it to be uttered between them. 

“Then I’ll just get us a bottle of something at dinner.”

That was not how the talk went in his mind. And he had rehearsed it plenty of time to know he never wanted to hear it in life. “Pardon?”

“Dinner.” Noctis worried his lower lip before settling on a thought. “I want to take you to dinner. Can I?”

“Oh.”

“Specs?”

“I… Yes. I think dinner would be marvellous.”

“And, I think,” Another moment of Noctis fretting. The familiar twist of his hands, the worry between his brows; “I mean. If it’s okay. I want to kiss you. But when it’s not a total shock.”

“Yes,” Ignis answered without thinking. His mind caught the potential pun far too late. Noctis was already beaming at him, steps away, and Ignis let his focus shift to the first proper kiss he had never planned for.


End file.
